


Travelling Light

by Immortalsane



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alien Culture, Amputation, Anal Sex, Body Modification, Castration, Consensual Underage Sex, Dubious Science, Foot Fetish, Gore, M/M, Multi, Other, Prostitution, Science Fiction, Underage Prostitution, Underage Sex, Uploading, Weirdness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:47:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24369826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Immortalsane/pseuds/Immortalsane
Summary: A young boy lives on a "refugee" planet that is, in essence, a slave camp. He'll do anything, sell anything, to get out...and when it comes right down to it, he sells all he has.
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Comments: 3
Kudos: 41





	Travelling Light

“Zayjah Davdavi Nixho!”

The boy so named gritted his teeth and took three deep breaths. “Lady Tu?”

The tall alien stepped up to him, her eyes flashing. And given that she had four eyes and each was the size of his palm, she had a lot of eye to flash. She was twice as tall as an adult human male, and almost ridiculously spindly. He was nine, and he could put his arms around her waist and touch his elbows. Her legs were longer than a man was tall by quite a ways, her torso shortened, but still thin. All four of her arms hung down past her knees, the upper pair folded in a human expression she’d picked up in her time on Vault. Her skin was purple grey, and it iridesced when she was angry. Much as it was doing now, actually. 

“Where have you been?”

No point in lying. Alaret were mildly empathic, and she could literally feel it when he did. “Down by the green.”

She snorted and leaned down, sniffing him, and her nose curled in disgust. “You stink.  _ And _ I told you not to go out of our sector.”

Zayjah sighed. “It’s the green, Lady Tu, it’s just one sector over.”

She huffed. “And where did you get the chits to cover the crossing?”

Zayjah winced. He stank. She knew the answer. “I went through the grates.”

Lady Tu closed her eyes. “You’re going to die doing that one of these days, Zayjah. Just. Just go clean up.”

He nodded and turned to go in the cubicle they shared. 

“And no tain privileges for a full cycle.”

He groaned, but didn’t argue. She wasn’t his parent, not really. But she owned the cube he lived in and felt it proper to treat him like a child. He couldn’t afford a cube, so he just dealt with it as best he could. 

Five minutes later, he stepped out of the sonics and flopped down on his sleeping mat. Tu glanced over at him and sighed at his nudity, but let it go. 

He stared out the cube into the alleyway moodily, watching his neighbors come and go. Orange was a shitty sector in a shitty place filled with shitty people on a shitty microplanet in a shitty system. Vault was, hypothetically, a “transient immigration center.” The idea was, the people came here from wherever, and then after they finished all the paperwork, they went out to wherever they were supposed to go.

The reality was that Vault was 824 years strong, and on it’s 20th generation of native born Vaultans. And more were being added all the time. Vault had a thriving spaceport, and more “transient immigrants” were among them. People kicked off ships, people running from whatever was going on on their planets, people naively hoping to immigrate to a planet that used Vault as an intermediary...all came to Vault. 

To say there was no way off would be a lie. Vault was owned by a conglomerate called ClexOnATAR that operated dozens of planets like it, with more being added over time. Clex, as the residents called it, sanctioned gangs that rounded up people for sale to armies, private slavers, companies needing laborers, the lot. They had factories and workhouses to produce whatever they could sell, to make the most of the rest of the population, and therein lay the second way off, or part of it. 

Leaving Vault was as simple as paying for a ticket. Just walk up to a checkpoint with your ticket, go to the spaceport, and leave. Clex stated quite clearly to anyone that would listen that anyone that wanted to leave could book passage any time. 

Except that Clex paid Vaultans in chits, chits that were only good on Vault. They had no value anywhere else, weren’t money, and couldn’t be exchanged. To buy a ticket, you had to save the chits, buy something that was worth money, and find someone that had money to sell it to. But every scrap of production that Vault had was the property of ClexOnATAR anyway, so you had to get creative in what you sold. 

And even selling goods was slow as shit, because everyone that came to Vault knew they could lowball. You could save a thousand chits, enough to live on for a year. Spend the lot of it on gear, weapons, or drugs that might be worth a few thousand credits galactic. And then turn around and sell it for a few  _ dozen _ credits, to someone that would leave Vault and and sell it for 30 or 40 times what they paid. 

Zayjah absolutely hated everything about this. He’d spent nine years on this ball of shit, and worked in factories for the last two. He’d been hustling Orange sector for the last year, saving his chits and dumping them on whatever he could sell. In a year, he’d made 8 credits. A ticket cost over 500 to get you to the nearest planet, and from there, it was more credits to get anywhere worth going. He wasn’t great at numbers, but he was pretty sure that at that rate, he’d be in his 70’s before he got off, if he wasn’t enslaved first.

He eyed the crowds of shuffling people, smelling the street foods, hearing the snatches of arguing and hustling and singing, and the sound of people with their tain turned up, programs and songs from other worlds filtering in. It was noisy, crowded, and alive. Home, his whole life.

Zayjah Davdavi Nixho would give absolutely anything for a way off this planet. 

~

Zayjah trudged home after his shift, mind slow and tired. He worked in the ponics, and his job was to walk up and down the rows, misting. For 10 hours out of every 20 hour day, he squeezed a little button that sprayed nutrients on plants, one plant at a time. Over. And over. And over. Up a row, spraying hundreds of times. Down the other side, doing same. Then up. Then down. Ten rows, two sides, twenty times back and forth. And then up the stairs to the next floor and do it again. Ten floors. 100 rows. 300 spritzes per row. 30,000 spritzes a shift. 

He’d counted. Over and over. 8 days out of the 9 day week, he worked. 

He paused and glanced at his chit card, sighing. He made about three chits a day, and got paid daily. He was pretty sure that paying him a pittance daily was to try and keep him from saving, cause it did, and Clex was nothing if not good at keeping Vaultans in their place. 

But...he’d saved a chit every work day the last two weeks. He had 19 on his card. He’d meant to try and buy something useful, but…

Zayjah sighed and turned, trudging in another direction. He stepped down an alley, and passed a few people sitting on crates or stools or just on the ground, until he came to a cube. There was a line, and he stood in it, eyes half closed. 

He almost didn’t register when he hit the head of the line, until the Yinae at the little makeshift counter clacked its fingers a few times. 

“Sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “Noruqy takoryp, and a huoxy.”

The Yinae tapped the little reader. “2 chit.”

Zayjah nodded and tapped the reader with his card, watching the humber of chits tick down. 

The Yinae nodded and a few seconds later, he was handed a bowl of noodles in a thick black sauce that was just salt, pan scrapings, and some seasoning packets boiled in water until it thickened. The real draw was the little lumps of meat dumped on top of it liberally, the noruqy. 

Noruqy were molluscoid pests that got everywhere on Vault, the result of some ship that hadn’t checked its water filters before dumping its waste almost 600 years ago. They were kinda squidgy, with a thin coating of oils on their skin that helped them wiggle around, and plates of shell down their backs so they could curl up and be surrounded by shell. They started out smaller than a human pupil, and grew to be as big as a fist. They didn’t damage anything important, they weren’t poisonous to most sophonts, and they mostly just went wherever it was dark and slightly damp and ate every bit of mold, bacteria, algae, fungus, and any plants they happened to find. 

Clex had tried any number of times to eliminate them for the first year they were there, to general Vaultan confusion. The little things made the whole cesspool cleaner, and no-one could figure out why the company was so keen to see them gone.

Right up until an enterprising Vaultan realized you could eat them. Touch of salt, bit of fat, spray of acid, and you had a cheap, tasty meal that 90% of Vaultans could eat. The word spread, and everyone came to the conclusion that Clex had: Vaultans were in possession of a self sustaining food source Clex didn’t control. And thus started the Noruqy War, the one and only war Vault had ever had.

It was a very, very short war, less than a year from start to finish. Vaultans didn’t have many things they would stand up for, but food was pretty much all of them. Three planet wide strikes, fifteen multisector riots, and exactly one absolute trashing of the spaceport later, Clex had magnanimously decided they didn’t care about the noruqy after all.

The huoxy, by contrast, was just a couple of flavor tabs dissolved in several gallons of water with a few dozen lethazine tabs, a common pain medication. It tasted like shit, and it mostly just gave you a light tingle in your lips and fingertips and toes.

Zayjah sat down on the ground out of the way and tucked in. Halfway through the bowl of hot, salty goodness, and several sips of the huoxy, and he was feeling much better. He contemplated, not for the first time, that starting a noruqy shop would be a sound, easy way to start building credits. He just had to have a bunch of chits first.

He took a bite, licking his lips as he wondered how much it would take. He pulled out the thin little palm sized piece of smart glass in his pocket and began looking things up.

“-solid credits in it, it’s not something they can really argue about-”

Zayjah froze, ears burning as he honed in on the conversation. Outsiders joked that a Vaultan could hear the word “credit” in over a thousand languages in a crowd of a hundred people standing under a ship engine going full blast. This was a lie. Zayjah could only recognize “credit” in 68 different languages.

The man speaking was Kapir, and his fur ruffled uncomfortably as he looked at the human with him. “Yeah, but...I mean, selling your body off? Like...what would people even want with my hand?”

The human shrugged. “Eat it, probably. Or art. Or collectibles. Who even cares? My ploin got me thirty credits, kako.”

The Kapir snorted. “And now you can’t mate. What are you going to do, sell more of yourself? Your liver, maybe? Your hands? You can only sell so much before there’s not enough left of you to use a ticket!”

The human sighed. “Yeah, that’s...kinda the problem. I was hoping...I mean, you got six arms, you’re not using all of them-”

The Kapir growled. “I wake up and find an arm missing, I’m coming for you.”   
  
“Yeah, yeah, just messing with you, kako. I just...it seems like it should work…”

The Kapir snorted and stood up, walking off with a bobble of it’s head. 

Zayjah stared at his noruqy, mind whirling. He stood up and walked over to plop down next to the human.

“Hi. Um. How do you do that?”

~

Zayjah blew out a breath as he stood in the little store. Most cubes were small, but some were allocated larger for businesses like this. He stared at the thin plastic between him and the items he needed.

This would be...a big step. But he could get off the planet. He could get out. 

“What can I do ya for, youngling?” The Yinae show owner boomed. 

Zayjah swallowed. “I need a neurcor and an embender.”

The Yinae whistled through its nose, a thoughtful sound. “Interesting combo. Changing sophonts?”

Zayjah shivered, and nodded. 

“Mmm. Well, a full model will run you, oh, 15 credits?”

Zayjah shook his head and pointed. “I want those.”

The Yinae blinked. “Youngling, that’s a bolt. It won’t do anything but keep you going if you die. You’ll-”

“Have to blow my head off and dig it out to make the jump, yes,” Zayjah said, his voice tinged with annoyance.

The Yinae let out another nasal whistle. “Well...that’s only two credits, course. Embender’s-”

Zayjah shook his head. “I mean it. That one.”

The Yinae stared at the boy. “So, to be clear, you want a last chance neurcor, and an embender that is tied straight to it, one to one.”

“Yes.”

The Yinae gave a swirl of its tentacles. “Your call. Eight credits for both.”

Zayjah nodded and pulled out his card, staring at the little 8 on his card. He blew out a breath and tapped it to the reader, and his credit balance dropped to zero.

“Znute. Where do you want it?”

The boy tapped behind his ear.

The Yinae nodded and grabbed the neurcor. It was a metal cylinder about as long as the tip of his pinky, and roughly as big around, with a tapered tip on one end. A mesh wrap around it terminated in a ring level with the point of the taper. The Yinae placed the ring against the skin behind Zayjah’s ear, and tapped the trigger. 

The neurcor slammed into and through his skull as it deployed explosively. He jerked sharply and collapsed, head ringing. For the next minute, he just twitched and spasmed as the little thing hooked up, his brain connecting to it so that his mind existed on both the meat of his brain and on the neurcor. If his brain was turned to total mush, he’d be alive and safe in the heart of the neurcor, just needing a computer connection to communicate with the outside world. 

Finally, the spasms stopped and he just lay there, breathing for a few minutes. He pushed himself shakily to his feet and then turned his head back to the Yinae.

The alien reached over and attached the embender, a disc as big around as a wide eye, half a finger’s width thick at the center, and smoothing out to flat edges that lay flush with his skin. 

“How long is the power good for?” Zayjah asked, rubbing the little lump behind his ear. 

“Year or two,” the Yinae said, swirling its tentacles. 

“And I can charge it, right?”

“Yes, if you happen to have a zepon connection,” the alien said, whistling with laughter. Zepon power was the galactic standard, but Vault used electricity, because of course they did. “Otherwise, no, just switch the power source out.”

Zayjah nodded, licking his lips. “Ok.”

He stepped outside and pulled out his glass, typing in the numbers and letters the human had given him. The string of characters took him to a site that had two options: buy or sell. He tapped sell, and it asked him to scan the merchandise. 

He waved the glass over himself, the screen showing what he’d scanned so far, until he’d managed to get everything. He tapped it, and it asked him if he was selling whole or parts. He hesitated and checked the whole option, then the parts, and grimaced. It was the same as he’d checked last time, parts were just worth more. He selected parts, and watched as it began listing his body with prices. His eyebrows went up. He hadn’t realized that there were so many ways he could be divided.

_ Auction or Flat? _

He sighed and tapped help, and read. Auction meant that he would start out with lower prices, but that they could be bid up. He might get way less, or way more, than flat. Flat just checked what everything else comparable was selling for and set his price at that. He looked at the flat price breakdown, and sighed. That wouldn’t do it. He’d be a hundred short. He eyed the auction option, thinking. 

If he went to auction, and the sales were only picked up at base price, he’d be 250 short, not just 100. And he could still fall short if he sold ok, but not great. But the guy he’d talked to had shown him his card, and the sale, and proved he’d gotten 30 for his ploin alone. And, because Zayjah was a suspicious child, he’d even pulled his tunic up to show his smooth groin, his ploin clearly gone. 

_ Auction _ , he selected. After vacillating for a second, he set the instant sell price of all parts to three times flat rate, and a duration of 60 hours on all auctions. He tapped  _ List _ , and a warning popped up.

_ Note: you are selling all parts of a body, species human. Once listed, parts cannot be unlisted. In the event of a sale, parts will be due for delivery in 20 hours. Selling out, or the sale of vital parts, may be fatal to the merchandise. Do you wish to proceed? _

Zayjah carefully checked that his implant wasn’t listed for sale, and breathed a sigh of relief before clicking yes.

_ Listing posted. Notifications will be sent of any sales. _

Zayjah swallowed, and tucked his glass away, then started for home. He made it half a block before his glass pinged three times. He froze and pulled it out. He was now the proud owner of  _ 108 _ credits and had 20 hours to deliver his ploin and eggs (as a set, of course) and left hand to their new owners. As he stared at the screen in disbelief, both his feet sold as a set, another 72 credits.

Maybe he should have set a higher max buy…

He shook himself, and instructed the glass to start sending him directions to his customers in order of receipt. First, his ploin. 

He set off through the streets, following the glass to a small cube in the back of beyond, which he was fairly certain was some kind of sleazy drinking place. He poked his head in and nearly took off running. It was a Gorath bar. Gorath looked like nothing so much as large turds with tentacles and teeth. Smelled not unlike one either. And they thought humans, and a variety of other sophonts, tasted great.

A big one, mottled brown and writhing sickeningly, slid forward towards him as the others in the bar leered at him. “Welcome, welcome. You have something of mine, no?”

Zayjah nodded, breathing shallowly as he stepped into the cube. He looked past the alien and saw a bunch of bottles of intoxicants. He squinted at them, and then wished he hadn’t as he realized his ploin was going to be flavoring for some alien drink. 

“Well?”

Zayjah shivered and hiked up his tunic, staring at his ploin and eggs. He swallowed hard and stepped up to the Gorath. “How will you-”

The Gorath snorted. “Get it to the right shape first. I don’t want a wilted one.”

The boy nodded, and grabbed it, tugging gently. For a horrible second, he thought he wasn’t going to be able to do it. But then he looked at the weird, strange aliens that were drooling over his body, eager to see him turned into food, and suddenly his ploin shot straight up. He shivered and gave it a couple of last strokes, unsure why the thought of these aliens taking part of him as food made him excited, and then turned to the bar owner. 

“Um, that’s as good as it gets,” he said softly. 

The Gorath nodded and pulled out a moncaut knife, drawing a slight sigh of relief from Zayjah. The tool would slice him up cleanly, and seal the wound behind itself. A slimy tentacle wrapped around his most sensitive parts, making him squeak and shiver at the feeling. The Gorath grinned and pulled them away from his body, and-

_ Shhp. _

Zayjah bit back a yell as the blade passed through him as easily as air. He stared down at his reddened, blank groin for a moment. It ached a little, and he resisted the urge to rub it. There was a faint ping from his implant, and his ploin and eggs reappeared. 

Only, not really. They were hard light projections, and they looked it. Slightly transparent, limned in a faint glow of escaping unfocused photons, and with a very, very small flicker to the image that made it clear they weren’t real. He touched it tentatively. To his living hand, it felt like he was touching a cross between the feeling of magnets repelling, glass, and flesh. But from his new ploin’s perspective, it felt, and responded, mostly like the old one. Mostly. It had a weird echo sensation, like he was experiencing a vivid memory of touching it, but he could live with that.

He looked up to see the Gorath dropping his real ploin and eggs into a big bottle. “Um, what does-”

The Gorath grinned. “Making ujble.” At the boy’s blank stare, he grinned wider. “We’ll let it sit a while, really get juicy. The fermentation makes a delicious drink that xivoda a Gorath nicely.”

“Xivoda?”

The bar owner pointed to a gorath that was flopped over, tentacles twitching, drooling on the floor. He’d genuinely thought it dead.

“Oh.”

The bar owner laughed. “If you have any more to sell later, come back, we can always use meat.”

Zayjath shivered and smiled. “Well, it’s all for sale.”

The alien made a  _ blurpt _ noise. “Not at those prices, kako.”

Zayjah grinned and dropped his tunic back down to cover himself, then headed out. As he walked, he checked the glass. He’d sold his other hand, and his left leg already, and someone had bought his heart. He shuddered at the thought of that being removed, but kept walking. 

The next stop was a Kapir diviner. 

“Mmm, let me see,” she said, reaching for his...well, her hand, now. She inspected it as he stared at the various withered gripping and manipulation appendages hanging from her neck and waist. “Yes, this will make a fine micept.”

He didn’t argue as she pulled out a moncaut and a second later, he was missing a hand. He watched as she packed it in salt, and set it under heat, presumably to dry up and wither like the others.

“Um, why-”

She spread her six arms, each tipped by a pair of three fingered hands that were palm to palm, chuckling. “One can never have too many hands,” she joked. 

Zayjah grinned, and then jumped as his new hand flickered on. He flexed and moved it, the echo sensation weird, and nodded. “Um, thanks for your purchase,” he said softly as he walked out. 

Feet next, and that took him, to his surprise, to a human section of the sector. He found the cube, a larger private one that meant the owner had either a lot of chits, or a lot of credits. He tapped the knocker, and the curtain pulled back, an older man smiling down at him. 

“Hello, youngling. Come in.”

Zayjah nodded, stepping into the cube, eyes a little wide. The place was furnished with actual furniture, a couch, small table, a chair, and-

“Wow,” he said softly, admiring the three large glasses on the walls. Two were showing artworks, and as he watched, they flickered on to new ones. The third had a tain program going, a vyxty that showed a Yinae using its tentacles to pleasure a boy his age. Well...pleasure for certain values, he thought, watching in fascination as a finger cluster the size of his fist, covered in chitin at the tips, pressed into the boy’s hole. 

Zayjah watched the tentacle slide deeper into the boy, who was stroking his ploin and making noises that were half pain, half excitement, and wished once again that the tain production wasn’t in Purple. Because he was pretty sure he could have made interspecies vyxty, and gotten out that way. And it looked fun.

The man smiled and put a hand on his shoulder. “May I see my purchases?”

Zayjah nodded and sat down, kicking off his shoes. He placed his feet on the table, heart speeding and digital ploin twitching as he stared at them. The man smiled and stroked them slowly, touching and caressing them all over. 

“Beautiful,” he said softly. He grinned at Zayjah. “I’ll give you another 5 credits to let me enjoy them still attached just the once.”

Zayjah swallowed. “Um. Use them...how?”

The man grinned and raised his tunic, showing the boy his hard ploin. “Guess.”

Zayjah grinned shyly. “Oh. Ok, but...I have to be quick. I’m selling fast.”

The man laughed. “I saw. I was happy to snag these for such a reasonable price.”

Zayjah blushed as the man sat on the couch next to him and pulled his feet into his lap. He shivered as the man wrapped the small feet around his ploin and started stroking it. His digital cock hardened and the man’s eyes twinkled as he stared at the bulge under his tunic. 

“Feel free to enjoy yourself too,” he murmured, raising one of the boy’s feet to his lips. 

Zayjah moaned as he licked it from heel to toe, and shyly lifted his tunic. His slightly glowing, flickering ploin came into view and the man chuckled at the sight. Zayjah wrapped his real hand around it and began stroking, the sensation strange, but still nice. He watched, biting his lip, as the man licked his other foot, and then lowered them to his own ploin, wrapping them around it again. This time, when he stroked, they slid easily. 

He watched, breath half held, as the man used his feet to get off, holding him by the ankles. The man’s breathing was slow, but starting to turn a little heavy, as he rocked his hips, sliding between the small feet. Zayjah switched hands without thinking, and gasped as his digital hand hit his digital ploin.  _ That _ felt better than his real ploin ever had! He giggled and stroked eagerly, feeling the pleasure washing through him. 

The man groaned at the sight of the boy, body parts parceled out already, getting off on seeing his feet used as a toy. He gasped and jerked, and a second later, a flood of goo poured over Zajah’s feet, making him moan. He wriggled his feet, his own orgasm blasting through him a second later. 

The man smiled as the boy panted, eyes half closed as he recovered. He pulled out a moncaut and Zayjah bit his lip as he was parted from his feet, so soon after finding out how much fun they could be. He stared at his stumps, eyes a little wide, as he waited the few seconds…

And then he had digital feet. He stood up carefully, testing them out. Walking felt a little weird, but he wasn’t falling or tripping. 

The man smiled and pulled out his chit card. “And now, the five credits for the extra fun.” 

Zayjah tapped his card to the man’s and grinned as he watched the number climb. With the man’s added bonus, he was showing 5 credits available, and...he blinked. 415 pending? He checked the notifications on his glass and shivered at seeing his chest, abs, and ears were sold now. He’d barely gone two hours! Even with the 5% commission on the sales from the site, he was going to have more than enough to get out!

The man smiled as Zayjah started towards the door, head in a daze. 

“Your shoes?”

Zayjah hesitated and looked at his digital feet and grinned. “Keep them. In fact, would you like my tunic?”

The man shivered. “Oh, yes please.”

Zayjah stripped, the pouch that held his glass and card on a thin strap going around his neck and one arm to hang at his hip. The man smiled. 

“Once you’ve chopped everything away, I’d be happy to pay you more to play with those feet of yours. And maybe other things...It’s been awhile since I’ve fucked a digisoph.”

Zayjah blushed. “Maybe.”

He ducked out, smiling as he faced the world naked and missing several parts of himself, on his way to being a digital ghost. His ploin hardened and he hummed happily as he set off to deliver more of his body to its new owners.

His right hand went to an Alaret that simply removed it without a word and sent him on his way. He had a little trouble finding the buyer for his lower leg, standing on the street and looking around curiously. 

< _ blllrpht> _

Zayjah shivered and looked down, eyes widening. There was a k!Slee in the sewer grate, and it’s big eye spots were on him. 

“Did...did you order a human lower leg?”

_ <fweeep! _ >

Zayjah swallowed hard. k!Slee had no appendages. At all. They were somewhat dome shaped ambulatory fungi. 

“I...how are you planning to get it off?”

The alien simply opened its mouth, revealing a wet, slime slicked chasm. No teeth that he could see, but it could probably just crush it off. Which would leave him bleeding heavily. 

“Um. I’m...I’m just gonna go get a moncaut, ok?”

< _ phblat! _ >

Zayjah shuddered, face starting to go seriously pale. “No, but...look, that will kill me. And i have more of me to deliver, other parts already sold.”

< _ phblat! _ > It opened its mouth again. 

Zayjah swallowed hard. “Um. Ok, here’s the um. I’m gonna get a moncaut  _ but _ ,” he said hurriedly as it glared at him, “only to seal the wound after...after.”

The k!Slee stared at him for a long moment.  _ <fweeeeeep _ >

The affirmative had a distinctly annoyed sound to it, but he’d take it. He dashed into the nearest shop and waved the attendant over. 

“Wow, you’re accident prone,” the young human woman said, grinning at him. 

Zayjah blushed furiously. “Um, not really. Do you have a moncaut?”

She eyed his missing body parts for a second, and he could see her decide it wasn’t her problem. “Sure. Twenty chits.”

He pulled out his card, and nearly cursed. As had been the case oh so rarely, he had fewer chits than he did credits, and he only had five credits. He sent up a mental note of thanks for old men that were pervy about boy feet.

“I’ll give you a credit for it?”

She blinked. “Sure.”

He tapped the card, and walked out with a really nice moncaut that he could probably chop down a building with. Slowly, because it was only as long as his hand, but he could do it. He stepped up to the sewer and sat down, swallowing hard. 

“Um, how do you-”

Its mouth opened again. 

Zayjah swallowed again and just hoped he would be able to seal the wound past how much this was going to hurt. He carefully eased his lower leg into the z!Slee maw, stopping at the knee. After a half second’s thought, he shut off the foot on that leg, the projection winking out. 

“Rea-”

The mouth closed, and Zayjah blinked as he felt a soft, sucking pressure all around his leg. He licked his lips, and then his mouth opened in shock as he felt...it felt like his leg was a frozen dessert, just gently being licked away. It didn’t hurt at all, but it felt incredibly strange. He sat on the street for half an hour, people walking around him and eyeing him curiously, as he fed his leg to a mushroom. 

He watched as the mouth closed all the way, and his leg was free. He lifted it up, eyeing the stump of his knee. It had a burn on it, like acid, and he wondered if that would hurt before he got to the buyer for the rest of the leg. As he was thinking, the digital leg and foot appeared, hiding the burn mostly from view. He looked down, but the k!Slee had already vanished into the sewer. 

The next buyer was, to his surprise, also human. 

“Uh.”

The woman smiled. “Doing good business, I see.”

Zayjah blushed and nodded, hopping onto the table. She touched his thigh, and nodded. “Good, good.”

He smiled and dropped the projection, and she hissed suddenly. “Um-”

“What did you do, dip it in acid?” she grumbled, inspecting his knee.

“I...I dipped it in a k!Slee, actually. It insisted.”

She grumbled a little more, and picked up her moncaut. He gritted his teeth as she carefully skinned away the damaged parts, then looked it over again. 

“Well, at least it was surface damage.”

He opened his mouth, and then yelped as she chopped his thigh off. He squirmed in place, and then let out a sigh of relief as his new digital leg appeared. 

“Um. What...can I ask what you’re going to do with that?”

She considered for a moment, and then grinned. “Eat it.”

He stared at her for a long second, not sure if she was joking. “R-Really?”

“Mm-hmm,” she said, already slicing his thigh into steaks. 

Zayjah stared at her for a long moment, and then grinned. “Well, everyone else has been eating me. I guess that’s what I’m for.” 

She winked. “Good. You look delicious. Pity you didn’t sell whole, I’d have bought everything.”

Zayjah blushed. “More money in parts, and...well, it’s kinda fun running around and being chopped to pieces.” 

The woman laughed. “Be sure and tell your friends that, I’d love to see a trend get started. Be nice to have little boys and girls stopping by to drop off their meat.” 

He blushed harder. “I, um, I’ll do that.”

Zayjah stepped out, staring at his glass for a moment. There was a massive batch bid for everything inside him  _ but _ his heart, and a message accompanying the bid. He clicked it open.

_ Want heart. Double pay. Reverse sale? _

Zayjah hesitated and tapped  _ Help _ on the site. He jumped as it pinged and a face appeared on his screen. Well. The outline of a face. 

“ _ Hello! How can I help you? _ ”

“Um. I had a late bid for my heart,” he said, and paused. He was literally talking about someone paying to cut him open and take his heart out, and the strangeness of that threw him for a second. He shook his head and went on. “So...a buyer wanted all my, um, insides, and missed out on the heart.”

The face hummed. “ _ It’s sold?” _

“Yes?”

“ _ Then it’s not yours to sell anymore. If you like, we can facilitate between the buyers and see if they can come to an arrangement?” _

Zayjah sighed. “But I don’t get anything from that?”

“ _ Normally no, but you set the sale up, so we can arrange a small commission of the sale. Say, ten percent?” _

Zayjah swallowed. “Good enough.”

_ “Excellent. We’ll let you know in an hour what they say. _ ”

The help desk clicked off and he looked at his list. As long as his insides were going away anyway, he might as well get his chest and abs taken off now. That way he could just drop the projection and let whoever got them scoop them out. 

Shaking his head at the thought of making it easier for someone to disembowel him, he headed for the next stop. He swallowed as he walked up to a Quia’m hostel. The little creatures were...deeply weird. 

“Um, hello?”

A creature just about the size of his hand scuttled out, it’s twelve legs clicking on the floor. It was blue and green, and its six compound eyes were swiveling independently, taking in its surroundings. It had a single pincer on a flexible tail, the pincer the size of his open mouth, and slightly oblong. There were more behind it, and in seconds, he was surrounded by dozens of Quia’ma.

“H-hi,” he said, shivering as they scuttled close. 

“Lay,” they said, their voices overlapping slightly out of sync, the small whispers combining to produce something he could understand. 

He shuddered and laid down on the floor. He was scared for a second that they’d just use their pointed legs or pinchers to take what he owed them, but two of them separated from the crowd carrying moncauts that were barely as long as his implant had been, suited for their pincers. He bit his lip as they started cutting, slicing around his chest and abdomen. He stared at the ceiling, face screwed up as they butchered his meat, the feeling of their legs pricking his skin as they walked on him to get at everything weird and unpleasant. 

And then the crowd of creatures grabbed the slab of meat and carried it off. He squeaked as their legs delicately poked at his insides as they walked over his exposed guts. He stared at his guts for a long moment, his head swimming as he watched his heart beat, his lungs struggling without ribs to support them. And then there was a flicker and the digital approximation of the missing flesh appeared. He took a deep breath and sat up, staring down at himself. The digital was translucent enough that he could see his insides behind the projection faintly. 

Zayjah looked over and blushed at seeing the Quia’ma doing what he’d expected, ripping his meat apart with their pincers. He gave his ploin a squeeze as he watched a Quia’m snip off his nipple, while another dug in his navel to pull it out. 

“Thanks for your purchase,” he said softly. He stood up carefully, but the digital projection held his guts in place just fine, even if it did feel like they were pressing on something weird. He poked it carefully, slightly weirded out at the sight of himself sans ribs, but the projection was doing everything it needed to. 

Ok, he needed to deliver his ears, and then he needed to figure out the whole mess with his guts. It had been almost an hour since he’d heard a ping for a bid, and part of him wondered if all the choice parts were gone, if he was going to have to figure out how to interface the cheap embender projections with his actual biology. He wasn’t sure the projections could digest food, for instance, and the thought of slowly starving until his body gave out and he could rip free of it wasn’t pleasant. 

He pulled out his glass and blinked in shock. His head had sold, minus...no  _ with _ the ears. THe buyer for the ears had come back and bought the whole head! And both his arms were sold, upper and lower on each side to different customers...that left him a leg, his behind and hips, and his back and sides, and he was clear!

He danced a moment in place, then stopped, giggling at the thought that he was excited about being cut all the way to pieces. 

Head first. It would be the scariest, but if the neurcor failed, he’d rather it be  _ before _ he went to all the trouble of delivering the rest of himself. There was almost no chance this would kill him, but just in case…

Zayjah followed the map to a little shop and poked his head in, looking around. 

“Hey!”

Zayjah blinked and his eyes refocused, finding a boy like him glaring at him. 

No, wait...not a boy like him...a Feltnah. You could tell by the way it’s body was made from various parts. The head looked human and young, but as it stood up, he could see two mismatched legs, Kapir on one side, and a Yinae tentacle on the other. He had an Alaret arm on one side, and a human on the other, and of course, a human head. His torso, though, was the actual Feltnah. It was a small, oblong box with rounded corners like a bar of soap. Made of some kind of clay enamel, and filled with intricate microhydraulics, it allowed a Feltnah to add parts from anything that had a circulatory system to its body. It usually did this by raiding mortuaries, though Feltnah were known to attack people when their parts started to get oozy if not preserved properly, or when bored with the ones they had. 

“Uh, hi. I’m here to deliver a head?”

“That head?” the Feltnah grumbled, pointing at his. 

“Yeah?”

“It’s still attached!”

Zayjah blinked. “Um, yes? You have to take it off…”

The Feltnah frowned. “You’re going digi, right?”

“Yeah?”

The alien sighed. “Yeah, fine, whatever. Come on.”

Zayjah swallowed and stepped in. The alien pushed him over to a brace with a little dip for his neck to sit in. 

“Hang on, gotta…”

He felt a ping in his embender, and his vision swam. A moment later, a sharp blade dropped and hit his neck. He was blind and deaf and aching for several panicked seconds, and then his head popped back into existence. 

Zayjah sat up, gulping and shuddering, watching as the alien picked up his old head and examined it. 

“Eh, I can clear that hole up fine. This’ll work.” It looked at him and smirked. “Oh, by the way, decoupling the embender and neurcor is a non-trivial event and hurts like a bitch. Should have sold the head last so it could just decouple on it’s own.”

Zayjah swallowed and glared at him. “You could have said.”

“Just did. Now out.”

Zayjah shivered and stood up, wobbling out of the shop on shaky legs. He paused and looked in the mirror, turning his face this way and that. It flickered and glowed like the rest of his digital body, and it was faintly translucent as well. But now, he got his first look as a non-solid mass of his body that had been digisophed, and he relaxed. He couldn’t see a digital brain, nor the outlines of his eyeballs, or anything. It looked like a normal head, just...glowing, translucent. A ghost. Experimentally, he shoved his fingers into his mouth, and they obediently disappeared from view, not showing through the outer illusion. 

Breathing a sigh of relief, he turned a little further. The embender was there, and he  _ could _ see the neurcor poking into the illusion. Probably solid things that went inside him, non-digi things, would be visible though his body. That promised some interesting applications, but for now…

His lower arms went to the same person, an Ixtri that happily told him she was going to make drumsticks out of his arm bones. His biceps went to another k!Slee, and it was an awkward job of an hour to let the creature eat them. He was down his entire right arm and his left bicep was in the process of being eaten when his glass chimed a call. 

“Um, yes?”

“ _ The sale is arranged. The batch buyer agreed to excellent terms to get your heart. You deliver all your insides to that buyer.” _

Zayjah nodded, looking sideways at the k!Slee contentedly eating his arm. “Ok. Um. You mentioned ten percent?”

“ _ Yes, there’s an additional 40 credits for the heart, on top of the 50 from the first buyer.” _

Zayjah’s eyes widened. “He paid  _ four hundred credits _ for my heart?”

“ _ Yes, he was quite insistent. Anything else?” _

Zayjah shivered. ‘No, but thank you.”

_ “Have a good day, sir.” _

Zayjah signed off, shivering. He jumped as the glass pinged, and he saw the final bids.  _ All parts sold _ .

He shakingly pulled out his card.  _ 790 credits pending _ . 

His body was worth almost 800 credits, and after the ticket, he’d still have close to three hundred to figure more things out. 

Zayjah stared at the sky, smiling as his arm was eaten. Things were looking up. 

~

Zayjah saved the best for last. He’d recognized the cube number, and sold his leg and back to their owners before coming to this one. He knocked on the door, and the perv from earlier answered, grinning down at him. 

“Mmm. So little skin left. Come in.”

Zayjah grinned and followed him in, acutely aware of the sense difference of the air on his bare behind contrasted with the sense on the rest of his body, now digital.

“So. do you just...flicker and let go of it?”

Zayjah nodded. “I think so. Um. But, um…”

The man smiled. “You’d like to let me test drive it before it comes off?”

Zayjah grinned shyly and nodded again.

The man hummed and pulled Zayjah into his lap, cooing at how light the boy was now that most of him was, well, made of light. “Did you want paying for that?”

Zayjah giggled. “No, sir, it’s more of, um, a request?”

The man smiled and Zayjah gasped as his ploin pressed up between his still-quite-real lower cheeks. “My pleasure.”

The man grabbed something and there was a little  _ splut _ sound. Then a thick, greased up rod pressed into Zayjah’s hole for the first time, and the last that he would feel it with this hole. Zayjah moaned in time with the man, his head falling back as he slid down onto the intruder, his digital eyes rolling back in his head. 

__ “You’re so tight,” the man whispered. He looked over Zayjah’s shoulder and laughed softly. “And  _ that’s _ an interesting bonus.”

Zayjah was about to ask the man what he meant when he realized he could feel it. The ploin was so long, it went straight through his remaining biological body and penetrated his digital one. The contrast between the ghost sensation, which was absolute pleasure, and the real one, which was slightly painful, but still pleasure, made Zayjah shudder and shake as he came around his first penetration. 

The man laughed and pushed his lolling head forwards. “Look.”

Zayjah moaned as he saw the rod inside him, poking out of his pelvis and up into his body, clear as day through his translucent torso. The man began raising and lowering him, fucking in and out of him, and Zayjah whimpered as he watched it happen from the outside. 

“Unf, you’re so delightful…” the man whispered, “that this isn’t going to take long!”

Zayjah shuddered as he watched the man’s ploin plant deep inside his digital body, and start to twitch. Ropes of goo shot into his body, suspended there by his embender fields, not taking the shape of his former guts, but just hanging there, like streaks in the air. He panted and giggled as he stroked his tummy, wondering how he would get those out. 

“Let go?”

Zayjah grinned and took a deep breath. He managed to flicker just right, and stood up, a complete ghost, leaving his pelvis impaled on the man’s ploin. The groin of the little pelvis was bare, and it was the shape of a pair of unders, but the pert little behind wrapped around the ploin of the man was very real and solid. Zayjah leaned down on impulse and sucked the tip of the man into his mouth, bending down until he face was mashed into his own former pelvis, then pulled back, blushing. 

The man panted and grinned. “Gods, you are delightful.” 

Zayjah giggled and spun in place, admiring himself. He was a full digisoph, now, a mind that existed only as information animating a body made of light. 

The man smiled. “You really are adorable. I hope you feel like coming around more?”

Zayjah blushed. “I wish I could, but I sold my meat so I could buy my way out.”

The man nodded. “Well, of course. But you could call?”

Zayjah stared at him quizzically. “Um. Not...not that you’re not, like, nice, but...why?”

The man chuckled. “You’re a digisoph, silly. You can place a call, hook your mind to the info stream, and be in two places at once. You can literally call me up and visit anytime. I just hook an embender to a glass, and bam, you have a body here to play with.”

Zayjah grinned. “Oh. Wow. Um, yes, definitely!”

~

He approached the checkpoint nervously. The embender he had didn’t let him manipulate his body, but he’d managed to find a writer who would add limited function for just five credits. He had a feeling that showing up naked to buy his way off planet would be bad form. 

Now, his digital body wore digital clothing, which he could change or turn off with a thought. He was currently wearing a simple skin suit and boots, black on black, and he’d changed his hair to look clean cut and neat. 

“Name.” The guard said as he stepped up to the line. 

“Zayjah Davdavi Nixho.”

The man frowned and eyed him. “You change sophonts?”

“Yeah?”

The man shrugged. “Fine. Ticket?”

“I need to purchase one.”

The man nodded absently and a second gate opened to the left of the one to the spaceport. “Figure it out through there.”

Zayjah nodded and stepped into the buyer’s area. He shivered at the sudden sounds, surrounded by booths selling tickets, contract work, all manner of things. His new friend, Javado, had suggested a relatively up and up (they’d only cheat you a little) merchant line that took passengers. Javado, it seemed, worked with several contacts off planet, bringing in and selling out goods. A smuggler, essentially, or maybe a fence, which explained his wealth. He’d mentioned that he even had contacts on Indurel!

He spotted the lines symbol and walked over. They had no-one waiting so he simply stepped up to the booth. 

“Hi. I’d like to purchase passage?”

The human on the other side looked up disinterestedly. “Yeah, ok. Passenger or freight?”

Zayjah blinked. “What?”

“You’re a digisoph. You don’t need food, air, space. We can pack you in the cargo hold and ship you.” He shrugged. “Or we can set aside a cabin for you, and you can travel that way.”

“Uh. How much do they cost?”

“How big are you?”

Zayjah swallowed and turned his head. “This is the only physical bit of me.”

“Huh. Switch off a second.”

Zayjah shivered and flicked off his embender. He could still see and hear, but he was now small enough to fit in the palm of a human hand. The man caught the lash up and plopped it on a scale. 

“20 mx.” He flicked the embender into the air and Zayjah popped back on. “How far are you going?”

“That...that depends on the price?”

“500 to Brol as a passenger. Shipping rates are here,” he said, pointing at a list.

Zayjah stared at the list, mouth moving as he calculated. “You said I weigh 20mx?” 

“Yep.” 

“But you only list prices in mo?”

“1mo, minimum rate.”

“Oh. So...it would be the minimum rate?”

The merchant sighed and leaned on the counter. “You ain’t got any neuro upgrades, yet, huh?”

Zayjah let the comment pass, staring at the list. “This...this seems to say that I can get to pretty much anywhere between here and the rim on a flat rate of 100 credits?”

The merchant eyed the list. “Yeah, it does seem to say that, doesn’t it?”

“F-Freight, please.”

“Great. Where to?”

Zayjah shivered. “Will I have network access?”

“Yeah, you’ll be able to hook up to the shipmind, talk, chat, the whole thing.”

He grinned. “Indurel.”

The man laughed. “Straight from Vault to the Imperial Capital, huh?”

“Why not?”

The man chuckled. “Your credits.”

~

Zayjah shivered as he was loaded into a tiny drawer, reaching out to the ship mind to keep himself entertained. It would take a couple of months, but soon enough, he’d be free and loose on the capital of the empire with almost seven hundred credits!

~

The merchant tapped the comm, humming. “Hey, boss.”

Javado smiled back at him. “Well?”

“Yeah, he’s loaded up, and you called it. Little thing wants Indurel.”

“Good. Make sure he gets there. I have some friends there that will really enjoy a hot little ghost that enjoys good sex.”

The merchant chuckled. “Hell, I might enjoy him.”

Javado laughed. “Just make sure he gets to my friends, and you’re good.”

The merchant hummed and tapped the board. “You know, he has a pretty decent little stack of credits, boss. How you gonna convince him to work for your friends?”

Javado snorted. “He has 600 credits, Terl. On Indurel, he’ll be destitute in a week if he isn’t robbed first.”

~

Zayjah shivered as he stared at his card. He wasn’t sure how, exactly, this had happened. Renting a space to live had sucked away a lot of his credits. No one wanted to hire a Vaultan ghost. He didn’t need to eat, but an info link cost a ridiculous amount, and he was starting to run low. In another week, he’d be on the streets. 

Not that that would be all that bad. He didn’t get cold, he didn’t get hungry, and he slept only if he wanted to. He’d charged his embender, and he was good for a year. 

He swallowed and considered his credits. He had enough, but if this didn’t pay off…

The screen said  _ calling _ , and a moment later Javado picked up. “ _ Zayjah! How goes it?” _

Zayjah blushed. “Bad. I, um. I went to Indurel, and-”

Javado sucked in a breath. “ _ Oh. You went to the most expensive planet in the Empire?” _

Zayjah coughed. “Yeah.”

“ _ Ok, listen close-” _

~

Zayjah giggled and moaned as he laid back, a Glisik pounding her ovipositor into him. The sight of it sliding into his torso, up so far that he could feel it in his digital throat, made him squirm. The alien let out a sharp screech as it released, and his torso filled with small eggs. 

He shivered as the woman pulled back, tapped her card to his, and left. He stood up, flickered to get rid of the waste, and walked out to stand in the hall, leaning in his doorway. 

“Hey, Z. Going well?”

He looked up at his boss. “Great! I think I’m pulling around 2k this week!”

His boss grinned. “Fantastic. I look forward to the rent.”

Zayjah smiled. “Rent” was half his take, and while his take was good, he liked to keep as much of that as possible. He reached out to touch his boss’ hip. “Can I get you to take a little of that in trade?”

The man grinned. “Hmm. 10% off the top?”

Zayjah ran a finger down his chest, his ploin springing to life at a thought as he maintained eye contact. “20?”

The man chuckled at the show. “Oh, fine. 20.”

Zayjah smiled and led the man into his room, prepared to bend over to keep a little more of his earnings. He had a nice room, lived in a cozy neighborhood in the undercity, had a nice info link, and got fucked 30 hours of the 40 hour day. 

And he had all the credits he could handle. 

So maybe he’d just changed the people that ran his life by coming here, and maybe he wasn’t out having adventures all over the galaxy, and maybe he’d given up his body to get here, a thousand lightyears away for a different bed, a different job, and a different grind. 

But honestly? 

He’d do it again in a heartbeat. If he had heartbeats. And besides, digisophs live forever. A few decades of sex, and he could  _ buy _ a ship.

But in the meantime…

“Unnngh,” he groaned as his boss slid into him. “Gods, yes.”

In the meantime, he was still a Vaultan through and through, and he had some credits to hang onto.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, so...uploading into a new/digital body is a big kink of mine, and as always, when you see mah stories about kids getting weird shit done, thas me I'm writing in there. This world was a lot of fun to play with, and while I doubt I'll come back to it, I might. Lots of things to play with on Vault.


End file.
